I find myself arguing on a daily basis with marketing types when it comes to campaign planning, but the one thing out of all the historical marketing tactics that I always like to hear is, ‘Lets put an event on’. Events work, and they still work in the digital age. In a time when content is king, there is nothing like an event to give you written, audio and video content that is engaging and unique.
As the latest B2B media consumption stats land on my desk, we can now see that digital events, webinars and live webcasts are topping the bill. The world is changing but events, seminars and workshops are all still there. The most sensible answer is a mash-up of the real and digital world; creating unique content and then making it fly across the social and digital channels to reach the largest audience.
Whether it is conferences, shows, seminars or workshops, you can use social media to break down the walls and grow your audience almost infinitely.
Be social to get social
When people think social media and events it always comes down to Twitter and most people take the same position:
- Create a hash tag.
- Create large posters at the event.
- Run twitterfall.
- Have a look at what people are saying.
Is this you? If it is, there is nothing wrong with that, it is a good place to start. But, you wouldn’t just turn up at the event with a few slides and hope people show up. As with everything in social media, you cannot just expect it to happen, you need to think, plan and engage. Take people on the journey with you. Think of your social media messages as an amplifier; you can get 100 people in a room, but you can get 10,000 people listening. Follow a simple four-step process and you will create amazing events that have real reach in to your target audience.
Step 1 – Crowdsource ideas
Most events fail because the content is not relevant to the audience. Relevance can be anything from boring to old, off-topic to off-the-planet. Many marketers will ignore their audience when planning events. We all start with what we know and find interesting when planning content, but how does that relate to the person who is going to listen.
You need to get in to your community, get in to your customers, and ask them what they would like to know and what would turn them on.
Match this with social research (voyeurism) on the wider market and get your finger on the pulse. What are people talking about, worrying about or complaining about?
Step 2 – Pre-event build up
Break down the content. You need real insight that you can share with the audience to whet their appetite and start a conversation. Your aim is to get people excited before they get to the real event. Find out what the ‘hot points’ are in your content, and create questions and stances that will entice the audience to interact.
Decide on your hash tags, for example, #mylovelyevent. Make sure this is used on all communications, whether DM, eDM or social media. Make sure that this sticks in the visitor’s head. If you have multiple events in different locations, then use multiple tags, as it will be easier to track and measure.
Get your event speakers involved by encouraging them to use the hash tags, and build social media in to their presentations. See if you can get your audience involved by using the Twitter walls for voting on specific questions or just for a bit of fun.
Step 3 – At the event
Make sure you have all the bases covered. You will need big hash tag signs and a twitter wall or several of them. Make sure they are in a prominent position and everyone knows where they are.
Have an insider, or several of them, who are there to tweet the content, to live blog or to update platforms with snippets of information that can be shared socially. Start this early so that there is already a stream of posts on the day of the event.
The host should be briefed to introduce the social media aspects of the event, mention the hash tag(s), and point out the live bloggers/tweeters.
Don’t forget to monitor everything throughout the day. Make sure you are sharing everything that is being said, just don’t go re-tweet crazy – there’s nothing worse than shameless self promotion with no value to the end user.
Step 4 – Post event
After the event, measure everything. Simplistic I know, but you need to know what has worked and what hasn’t. You need to know what the updates and sharing were about and whether feedback was positive.
It’s important to keep the content going after the event too. Give it legs across the social media world. Anyone who was engaged in the event should receive something afterwards – a wrap-up, a video, the slide decks. Wrap everything up with a blog post, with all the ‘hot points’ laid out for the users to digest easily.
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